Jo Raquel Tejada net worth is $35 Million. Also know about Jo Raquel Tejada bio, salary, height, age weight, relationship and more …

Jo Raquel Tejada Wiki Biography

Jo Raquel Tejada is a Chicago, Illinois-born American actress and a pop culture icon, who as Raquel Welch is still perhaps best known from her most iconic role in “One Million Years BC” in 1966, in which she appeared in her purposely depleted prehistoric bikini, which captured the hearts of modern men and of course their teenage sons. It went on to be the best selling pin-up poster at that time, and to her being an international sex symbol of 1960s. Born on September 5, 1940 into a family of Bolivian and English ancestry, Raquel has been active in the field of entertainment since 1959.

So just how rich is Raquel Welch? The actress who has continued to be a relevant presence in pop culture, has an estimated net worth of $35 million. In addition to her wealth, she has achieved popularity that’s always helped her hold her place in Hollywood. Obviously, her net worth has come from her very successful acting career.

Raquel’s career began as a performer from the tender age of seven when she took on ballet classes. At the age of 17, she quit ballet after her teacher said her body was not the right type. She started acting in 1959, and concurrently took a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, San Diego. She played small roles in television series like “Bewitched”, “The Virginian” and “McHale’s Navy”, but her big break came after signing a contract with 20^th Century Fox: a leading role in the sci-fi movie “Fantastic Voyage” in early 1966, and then her most iconic role in “One Million Years B.C.” which is regarded as the pillar for her success that’s still relevant today. Raquel is also among the first few who portrayed a female leading role in western movie, “Hannie Caulder”, based on revenge which inspired later revenge movies like “Kill Bill”.

She won a Golden Globe award for best actress for her role in “The Four Musketeers” (1974) – which followed “the Three Musketeers” (1973) – and was also nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in the television drama “Right to Die” (1987). Welch was due to star in 1982 adaptation of Cannery Row, but was fired a few days into production and replaced by Debra Winger. Welch sued the production team and collected $10.8 million as settlement. Welch received a star on the Holly Wood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. She was also rewarded for her positive promotion of Americans of Latin heritage.

Apart from acting, Welch also has her hand in different beauty related programs. With her Multi-Platinum collection of fitness and yoga videos and her books with her views on healthy living, nutrition, beauty and style, she has been adding to her wealth. As a business woman she began her line of wigs, jewelry and skin care products. In January 2007 Welch was selected as new face of MAC Cosmetics Beauty Icon series with her line featuring limited edition make up shades.

Regarding her personal live, a mother of two children, Damon Welch and Tahnee Welch, she has been married to James Welch (1959-64), Patrick Curtis (1967-72), Andre Weinfeld (1980-90) and Richard Palmer (1999 – now separated). With all the fame and a significant net worth, Welch has established herself as a relevant and a respectable figure in the pop film culture as of 2015.

IMDB Wikipedia “100 Rifles” (1969) “Myra Breckinridge” (1970) “Myra Breckinridge” (1970) September 5 “Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage” (2010) “McHale’s Navy” “One Million Years BC” (1966) $35 Million 1940 (age 75 20th Century Fox 27th Street 95th Street (Chicago) Academy Award Acting Actor Airlines for America Albany International Airport Alex Solis American Society of Clinical Oncology Amy Schumer Andre Weinfeld André Weinfeld (m. 1980–90) Arizona Cardinals Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo Associated Press AT&T Bandolero! (1968) Basketball Bedazzled (1967) Bewitched Chicago Cultural icon Culture Damon Welch Debra Winger Domestic violence Fantastic Voyage (1966) Golden Globe Award for her performance in the television drama (1987) Hollywood Walk of Fame (1994) Illinois Illinois House of Representatives Imagen Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award (2001) Instagram Jack Larson James Bridges James Welch James Welch (m. 1959–64) Jimmy Olsen Josephine Sarah Hall One Million Years B.C. Patrick Curtis Patrick Curtis (m. 1967–72) Plea Pop Icon Popular culture Raquel Welch Raquel Welch / Vladimir Cosma – L’Animal 91977) Raquel! (2005) Richard Palmer Tahnee Welch The Virginian This Girl’s Back In Town (1987) United States

Jo Raquel Tejada Quick Info

Jo Raquel Tejada Trademarks

1. Seductive deep voice
2. Voluptuous figure
3. Large brown eyes
4. Strawberry blonde hair

Jo Raquel Tejada Quotes

• There was this perception of “Oh, she’s just a sexpot. She’s just a body. She probably can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.” In my first couple of movies, I had no dialogue. It was frustrating. And then I started to realize that it came with the territory. Look at somebody like Marilyn Monroe. I always wondered why she seemed so unhappy. Everybody worshipped her and she was so extraordinary and hypnotic on screen. But they never nominated her for any of her musicals or comedies, as good as she was. Because for some reason, somebody with her sex appeal, her indescribable attraction, is rarely taken seriously. Hollywood doesn’t honor comedy and it doesn’t honor sex appeal. And they definitely don’t give awards to either of them. So you always feel a little insecure.
• I think [title designer Maurice Binder] understood what was sexy and what wasn’t. He knew how to be sexy without being profane about it, and without being too graphic. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really understand it at the time. When we were shooting that opening moment in Fathom (1967), it seemed silly to me. They had to explain it to me, and even then I was like “Okay, fine, whatever you think.”.
• … I remember James Coburn once said to me, “You know what’s the sexiest thing of all? A little mystery.” And he was so right about that. When you put it all out there, there’s nothing left to the imagination. So where am I going to participate? I’ve said this before and I still agree with it, the most erogenous zone is the brain. It’s all happening there. Otherwise, it’s just body parts.
• [In 2012] I think we’ve gotten to the point in our culture where we’re all sex addicts, literally. We have equated happiness in life with as many orgasms as you can possibly pack in, regardless of where it is that you deposit your love interest. It’s just dehumanizing. And I have to honestly say, I think this era of porn is at least partially responsible for it. Where is the anticipation and the personalization? It’s all pre-fab now. You have these images coming at you unannounced and unsolicited. It just gets to be so plastic and phony to me. Maybe men respond to that. But is it really better than an experience with a real life girl that he cares about? It’s an exploitation of the poor male’s libidos. Poor babies, they can’t control themselves. I just imagine them sitting in front of their computers, completely annihilated. They haven’t done anything, they don’t have a job, they barely have ambition anymore. And it makes for laziness and a not very good sex partner. Do they know how to negotiate something that isn’t pre-fab and injected directly into their brain?
• I don’t care if I’m becoming one of those old fogies who says, “Back in my day we didn’t have to hear about sex all the time.” Can you imagine? My fantasies were all made up on my own. They’re ruining us with all the explanations and the graphicness. Nobody remembers what it’s like to be left to form your own ideas about what’s erotic and sexual. We’re not allowed any individuality. I thought that was the fun of the whole thing. It’s my fantasy. I didn’t pick it off the Internet somewhere. It’s my fantasy.
• You could say a lot of things about [One Million Years B.C. (1966)], but challenging isn’t one of them.
• Every day, every day. I have people that handle my fan mail, and every day tons of photos come in, with requests for autographs. The fur bikini [from One Million Years B.C. (1966)] is the perennial one. I do feel very fortunate, because I had no suspicion that a dinosaur movie would ever pay off for me as an actress. I figured, it’s going to be swept under the carpet, nobody will ever see it. I had a couple of small children at the time, and I used to take them over to see Ray Harryhausen. He did all the special effects on the movie, all the stop-motion animation, and he’s pretty much a science fiction legend. Ray would show my kids all the little figurines he used, all the dinosaurs. And then he’d show them how the animation was done, and they were fascinated. So that’s what it seemed like to me. It was great stuff for kids, but maybe not the ideal way for an actress to enter the movie-making scene. I even complained to the studio. I was like “Please, please don’t make me do the dinosaur movie.” They were like “No, Raquel, you don’t understand. It’s a classic. It’ll live on forever.” Turns out they were right.
• Actually, there was never just one bikini. They made several of them. They were created by this wonderful costume designer, Carl Toms, and he had to do it in triplicate. Because, as he explained it to me, at one point my character would get wet, and then there was a fight scene and blood would get on it. So they had to have several versions of the same costume, and they all had to be formfitting. So he literally designed it around me. Carl just draped me in doeskin, and I stood there while he worked on it with scissors.
• I probably did over think [my lines in One Million Years B.C. (1966)]. Not that it mattered. I went to the director, Don Chaffey, very early in the shoot and said, “Don, may I have a word with you?”. And he sighed and said, “Yeah, what is it?”. I could tell right away that he was not very interested. “Well, I’ve read the script,” I said, “and I’ve been thinking…” And he turned to me and said, “Don’t.” And I thought, okay, that in a nutshell is what it’s all about. They don’t want to hear anything from me. Just show up in the costume and take orders. He said, “See that rock over there? That’s rock A. When I say action, you run from rock A and when you get to the middle of the frame, you look up at the sky like there’s a giant turtle growling down at you. You scream, run to rock B and we break for lunch.”.
• [Don Chaffey] wasn’t unkind as a director. But when I wanted to possibly find ways to enhance my character, to make her more vulnerable or have some kind of backstory, he was not interested. That was the hardest part, to realize that I was really an object. Not just to Don, but to the film industry in general. I was a completely non-verbal object that wasn’t allowed to talk more than necessary. And that isn’t exactly my personality, as you can now hear.
• [Myra Breckinridge (1970)] was based on a brilliant book by Gore Vidal, about sexual duality and the masculine or feminine aspects of every personality, written about in a way that really hadn’t been expressed before. It wasn’t traditional male and female stuff. It was talking about homosexuality or lesbianism or whatever. It was about crossing the line and breaking new ground sexually. But the problem with the movie was it had none of the fun and absurdity and truth of that exploration, which was dealt with so effectively in the book. It was just a bunch of weird scenes strung together. It became this sort of Fellini-esque crazy dream that’s all over the place. It wasn’t the funny adventure it should’ve been. It was a bizarre adventure with some offensive things in it. A lot of audiences didn’t really understand what was going on.
• I did a Q&A after one of the screenings [at Lincoln Center, New York City, in 2012 for Myra Breckinridge (1970)], with Simon Doonan, and at one point he asked me, “Is there nothing you liked about this movie?”. And I said, “Well, I liked the experience of it. I enjoyed making it.” But there’s not much you can do as an actor when a film is falling apart. I couldn’t control that the script wasn’t coming together. Each rewrite got further and further from making any sense.
• I had read the book, and I thought it was hysterically funny. I knew the studio was making it into a movie, and I heard they were talking to Anne Bancroft about doing the lead. When she turned it down, I called (producer) Richard D. Zanuck and said, “I don’t know what kind of actress you’re looking for, but it occurred to me after reading the book, if there was a guy who wanted to change himself into a movie star woman” – and that’s what this character was about. He begins as Myron, a very gay movie critic who’s totally infatuated with all of these swashbuckling heroines. He wanted to switch over and become a woman like that. So I told Dick, “If this guy wanted to become a glamorous female movie star, he might like to look like me.” And he said, “Oh my God, you have a point. Let me get (co-producer) David Brown on the line.”.
• When I signed on [for Myra Breckinridge (1970)], it was understood that there was not going to be a rape scene. And then of course it suddenly appeared in the script. But it was very vague. They weren’t very specific in the description. So I’m wondering if they’re going to try something. (Director) Michael Sarne used to torture me on the set a lot. He would come around with this red rectangular box of a certain length and a certain width. And it was clear, you know… what might be in the box. And he’d be like “I have something here for you.” I’d just look away, wouldn’t even acknowledge him. Finally, the big day arrives and we’re about to shoot the scene and he says, “Well, now is the time.” I turn to him and say, “Michael, just drop it! I am not strapping anything on!”. And I didn’t. He said, “Well, that’s not fun.” But I wouldn’t budge.
• He didn’t even know. The poor guy who played Rusty Godowski [Roger Herren], he was like a deer in headlights. He read the script and he was like “I don’t understand this scene.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I was just like, “Yeah, it is a little vague, isn’t it?”. I just could not make the poor guy more nervous than he was already. When we shot it, I kind of suspended my disbelief and thought, “Well okay, I guess we’re doing this. But as long as there’s nothing graphic, it’ll be okay. I’m just here to play the role.” Everything about that movie, the good and the bad, it was if nothing else… a challenge.
• Not everybody is comfortable with my ethnicity. When I first came along in the business, they [20th Century Fox] didn’t really like the idea of my name being Raquel. I signed with them and almost immediately they wanted me to change my name. They came to me and said, “We have the solution. We figured it all out. You’re going to be Debbie Welch.” I think they were paranoid that Raquel sounded too ethnic. And I thought, “Maybe I should be more paranoid than I am.” But I wasn’t raised thinking of myself or my background as particularly exotic. I felt very American and middle of the road. I knew that I had a little salsa in my blood, but on my mother’s side there was the whole English heritage.
• [20th Century Fox] said it [“Raquel”] was difficult to pronounce, nobody’s going to remember it. And they had a point. In school, nobody could pronounce my name. They just called me Rocky. But school kids are one thing, your career as an adult woman is another. I took it as a challenge. I was like “Well, let’s see what happens.” You either embrace your identity or you let them force you into homogenizing yourself.
• [Hollywood name-changing] was mostly an American insecurity. Americans were not sure how to deal with the exotic. I was lucky that one of my first movies, One Million Years B.C. (1966) was made in Europe by a British company. The Brits, and a lot of the rest of Europe, seemed to really love exotic women. The fact that I was American and exotic just made me more appealing to them.
• I’ve always personally been color blind. Growing up, I thought Lena Horne was amazing, and Diahann Carroll was amazing, and I absolutely fell in love with Sidney Poitier. Whether they were black or white or whatever, it wasn’t a big thing for me. When I was doing 100 Rifles (1969) and I found out I’d be working with Jim Brown, I was more concerned with whether he could act, because he was primarily known as a football player. But he was great.
• [on her marriage to James Welch] I was crazy in love with him – I was sure the moment I saw him he would be the father of my children. He was beautiful, he had this surly quality, and that was it! We were foolish, we ran away and got married, had two children too quickly. It was a romantic fantasy, which I am really good at.
• [on her daughter Tahnee Welch] She is much more beautiful than I was.
• [on divorcing first husband James Welch] Always having to be a perfect vision can be hard. My first husband was a good person. The second (Patrick Curtis) turned into a Svengali – I felt I was being manipulated. I should never have run off with the two kids (Damon and Tahnee) – I should have been more patient. Even though Jim was being horrible I should have stuck it out. I often say to my sister, “When I look back over my four husbands, he was the best.”.
• [In 2008] I have pictures of me at 23 or 24 and I think, “Oh my God, I was really once that size!”. But actually, I think my face looks better now.
• My father was a perfectionist. We had to hop to everything and have marvelous table manners. I could only wear navy blue and gray and white. He wanted me to be interested in tennis and horses just like a little princess, but I couldn’t stand such things.
• If you have physical attractiveness, you don’t have to act.
• [on Mae West] I do think she was a spectacular talent. There’s no question she was a comedic genius, but I did, in person, actually feel like she was some kind of a dockworker in drag.
• Americans have always had sex symbols. It’a time-honored tradition and I’m flattered to have been one. But it’s hard to have a long, fruitful career once you’ve been stereotyped that way. That’s why I’m proud to say I’ve endured.
• The mind is an erogenous zone.
• [In 1973] I couldn’t stand that my husband was being unfaithful. I am Raquel Welch – understand?
• Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.
• Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself, and you begin to follow your own instincts – only then can you be successful. You become more satisfied, and when you are, other people will tend to be satisfied by what you do.

Jo Raquel Tejada Important Facts

• $150,000
• $60,000
• Is the 21st great granddaughter of King Edward I.
• After Welch starred in One Million Years B.C. (1966) for Hammer Films, they planned a vehicle for her called Mistress of the Seas, a biopic of 18th century pirate Anne Bonney, “The true story of Anne Bonney who slashed her way to fame and fortune alongside the most dreaded scourges of the Caribbean!” This was canned for financial reasons. Surviving poster artwork depicts Welch with a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other, very scantily clad.
• Is one of 20 actresses who did not receive an Oscar nomination for their Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical Golden Globe-winning performance; hers being for The Three Musketeers (1973). The others, in chronological order, are: June Allyson for Too Young to Kiss (1951), Ethel Merman for Call Me Madam (1953), Jean Simmons for Guys and Dolls (1955), Taina Elg and Kay Kendall for Les Girls (1957), Marilyn Monroe for Some Like It Hot (1959), Rosalind Russell for A Majority of One (1961) and Gypsy (1962), Patty Duke for Me, Natalie (1969), Twiggy for The Boy Friend (1971), Barbra Streisand for A Star Is Born (1976), Bernadette Peters for Pennies from Heaven (1981), Kathleen Turner for Romancing the Stone (1984) and Prizzi’s Honor (1985), Miranda Richardson for Enchanted April (1991), Jamie Lee Curtis for True Lies (1994), Nicole Kidman for To Die For (1995), Madonna for Evita (1996), Renée Zellweger for Nurse Betty (2000), Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), and Amy Adams for Big Eyes (2014).
• Was considered for the title role in Norma Rae (1979) but Sally Field was cast instead (she went on to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance and won).
• Her grunting in One Million Years B.C. (1966) was dubbed by Nikki Van der Zyl.
• As of 2013, celebrity spokesperson for Foster Grant sunglasses since the 1960s.
• She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on June 8, 1996.
• 20th Century Fox wanted her to change her name to Debbie Welch, because they thought Raquel was too difficult to pronounce.
• Has American ancestry on her mother’s side, dating back to both John Quincy Adams and the Mayflower. Her father immigrated from La Paz, Bolivia at age 17. His ancestry can be traced back to Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, a Bolivian of Spanish ancestry.
• Ten months after the large age gap brought her relationship with Gary Stretch to an end, she dated Los Angeles restaurateur Richard Palmer, who is 15 years her junior. Richard left his fiancée, actress Cathy Moriarty for Raquel after they met in October 1997 at Ago, the West Hollywood restaurant owned by Robert De Niro.
• She was crowned Miss La Jolla and Miss Southern California before dropping out of college in San Diego, California where she had an acting scholarship, to get married to her high-school sweetheart, James Welch, at age 19.
• Revealed that her first marriage was the best of her four.
• Dated champion boxer Gary Stretch when she was 56 and he was 31 (1996). Gary was younger than her two children, Damon Welch and Tahnee Welch. Raquel was also born the same year as Gary’s father, Ron Stretch. Their brief romance ended because of their age difference.
• Her younger sister, Gail Tejada, is an ovarian cancer survivor.
• Was named “The Worst Actress of All Time” in Harry Medved and Michael Medved’s 1980 book “The Golden Turkey Awards”, beating out Candice Bergen, Mamie Van Doren, and even Vera Ralston. Interestingly, her co-star in Bluebeard (1972), Richard Burton, was named “The Worst Actor of All Time” in the same book.
• Her younger brother is Castillo Tejada.
• Was promoted as a sex symbol by her then-husband Patrick Curtis, a film producer and Hollywood press agent.
• Ex-girlfriend of costume designer Ron Talsky, who also designed her clothes for the films Kansas City Bomber (1972) and The Last of Sheila (1973) (1973).
• Ex-stepmother of Damon Curtis.
• Profiled in the book “Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 1962-1973” by Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul (McFarland, 2002).
• Second husband, producer Patrick Curtis, reportedly was one of several infants who took turns playing the baby of Olivia de Havilland in Gone with the Wind (1939).
• In 1970, she accepted the Oscar for “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” on behalf of Goldie Hawn, who wasn’t present at the awards ceremony
• One of the bombshells shown in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) (The other two were Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe).
• Son Damon Welch married the daughter of England and Yorkshire cricket legend Fred Trueman.
• Her ex-husband, Director Producer André Weinfeld, had a property on the private island of Mustique.
• Was a former cocktail waitress.
• Her former assistant was Polly Brown.
• Auditioned for the role of Mary Ann Summers in Gilligan’s Island (1964), which went to Dawn Wells.
• Had a notorious backstage feud with the indomitable Mae West on the set of Myra Breckinridge (1970).
• Mentioned in the theme song of the 1980s television series The Fall Guy (1981).
• She broke her wrist in an automobile crash in Los Angeles, California on August 30, 2003.
• Among her many beauty contest titles were “Miss Photogenic”, “Miss Contour” and “Miss Maid of California” – all won while she was in her teens.
• She was fired from Cannery Row (1982) and replaced by Debra Winger. She then sued Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and won a $10 million judgement.
• Husband Richard Palmer is a restaurateur. The couple are now separated.
• Her father, Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo (1911-1976), was Bolivian.
• Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#18) (1995).
• Attended and graduated from La Jolla High School in La Jolla, California (1958).
• Miss Fairest of the Fair in San Diego, California in 1958.
• Mother of Tahnee Welch and Damon Welch.
• Born at 2:40pm-CDT.

Jo Raquel Tejada Filmography

Jo Raquel Tejada Awards